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MILFORD, MICHIGAN — I six-point buckle into the passenger seat of John Heinricy’s 2009 Cadillac CTS-V. It’s a silver sedan with a roll cage that earned the Nurburgring decal with the number 7.59.32 added on the rear deck. An automatic, Heinricy shifts it into the “sport” mode, letting the transmission do that part of the work. Then he drives the big sedan around the GM Proving Ground “Lutzring,” doing things with a Cadillac that you’d swear couldn’t be done with a Cadillac.

As a mere passenger (an intentional passenger, that is), I couldn’t find anything wrong with the CTS-V’s behavior around the technical, twisty, hilly circuit. What can I say? Heinricy is an accomplished driver. He keeps accelerating into the turns well past the point most of us would have braked. How much is the car and how much is him? The answer seems to be “yes.”

Why not a six-speed manual, which will top out at 191 mph, 16 mph better than the automatic? “I’d been driving this car for days,” he says and felt more familiar with it when his time came up at the Nordschleife. You only get one lap’s chance to set the record.

There’s no record at the Lutzring; even unfettered by a member of the press in the front passenger seat, the CTS-V ought to be playing second-fiddle to the two Corvette ZR-1s being tested around the Milford Proving Grounds, including a bright-yellow one with the carbon-fiber roof making the car look a bit retro with a kind of two-tone paint job.

For the record, Cadillac says it believes Heinricy’s 7.59.32 is a record for a production sedan on street tires at the ‘Ring.

“We hit about 142” mph on my Lutzring ride, Heinricy tells me. The other roll-caged CTS-V, the manual-gearbox one we pass as it limps along during our second lap, the hot one, is not so lucky. It blows a tire and gently biffs the Armco before it comes to a stop.

The good news is that in the Caddy, it doesn’t feel as fast as 142. It’s smooth and a bit quieter than a Mercedes AMG. After the Heinricy drive, I get to sample another CTS-V, again only as a passenger, this one a black automatic, around the Milford Proving Grounds’ handling course and on acceleration runs. A few observations:

The new, faster-reacting Magnetic Ride Control has two driver-controlled settings, “touring” and “sport.” Because each setting was tuned separately, it’s softer than the previous car in the touring setting, and stiffer in sport. This becomes obvious on the rough roads of Milford’s handling course, where the v doesn’t feel much stiffer than the quotidian CTS. When the driver switches to “sport,” the suspension gets busier on the most uneven parts of the road, but it’s not beyond the level of comfort. You could forget to switch it back in Detroit or Manhattan and not think anything was wrong. The;V has a Getrag limited-slip differential, and uneven-thickness half-shafts, 55mm (hollow) left and 35mm (hollow) right to prevent the rear torsional stiffness to act like a spring. This is to limit axle-hop at launch, perhaps the most serious problem with the last CTS-V. It works: the driver brake-torques on acceleration runs, the tires chirp-chirp-chirp and they take hold of the road as my head compresses, hard, into the headrest. Traction/stability control has four settings: 1) Normal. 2) Click the steering-wheel button once, and you cancel the traction control. This is for winter driving. My designated driver says the car works fine in Michigan winters with all-season tires. 3) Click it twice, and traction control is off, with stability control on, but tuned for competition driving. 4) Hold the button for five seconds, and traction control and stability control are off completely. Completely. The pushrod V-8 burble is well-muffled, but noticeable under acceleration, with the supercharger whine threatening to drown it out. Cadillac is still tweaking the engine’s sound, but otherwise the car is pretty much done. The driver swears there’s no excessive understeer, the bane of any previous GM performance car going back to the days of the Chevy Corvair, and he does nothing that makes me doubt him. Has Bob Lutz finally expunged the fear of oversteer Ralph Nader caused GM 43 years ago? Another question that will have to wait for our first-hand drive (and yes, I know the C6 Corvette is pretty good on this issue, too).

It’s not long before we can draw our own conclusions, but my designated driver
says the Cadillac balances off ride and handling, to be more of a road-carver than, say, typical Mercedes AMG sedans. Because of its size and weight, though, the CTS-V’s direct competitor, handling-wise, is not the BMW M3, it’s the M5.